Saturday, November 13, 2010

Are You Sick of Christmas Yet?

I sure hope not, because ohmygosh, I'm nowhere NEAR done with my Christmas cards. This is farthest behind I've been on holiday cards in five years. I'm feeling particularly drawn to designing one-layer cards to solve this scheduling snafu, and I'm finding a lot of the Shady Tree Studio stamps I've gotten recently are useful for this.

Consider this small bough stamp from Naturally Imagined. I repeatedly stamped it three times (starting with the center one) and then stamped a random Merry Christmas stamp from my collection in real red (Stampabilities, perhaps?). The boughs are colored with SU markers...I shaded them with two different greens and rather like how it turned out.

I'd tell you which greens if I could remember, but I only think I used green galore and garden green. Don't take my word for it, though. I'm very unreliable right now, having spent many hours Friday working at an elementary school book fair dealing with children who can't count money or make up their minds whether to buy the Star Wars Jedi School paperback, The World's 101 Grossest Things, or a $5 plastic pointer. Oh, and let's not forget about the kids who bring in ziploc baggies with $24.56 in pennies, nickles, and dimes. Or the kids who have no money at all.

Those break my heart. We had a few boxes of free books for them to pick from. No one went away unhappy. 

But I digress. Back to today's card.



Using two different sizes of red bling made me giddy. Bling has that effect on me. Does it have that effect on you, too?

Late Thursday night, I whipped out a bunch of one-layer Christmas cards with the new Shady Tree set called Holly Jolly. I'll show those next week. I'm also going to try to pull together some CASification make-overs, and show some bookmarks I made with PTI's All Booked Up. There's a lesson in those bookmarks about not being stupid that I'll share as well, because, you know, confession is good for the soul.

Now I've built up your expectations and will dash them horribly with how mundane my stupidity is. I'm sorry. In advance. Please forgive me and have a lovely weekend.

12 comments:

  1. What a pretty card! And I REALLY like that bough. It looks beautiful the way you've shaded the colors. Great one-layer job!

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  2. Bring on the Christmas stuff. Love it...and love your card too..clean, simple, perfect. Looking forward to seeing the bookmarks. Thanks for sharing!

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  3. You asked "Are you sick of Christmas yet?" - the answer is absolutely not!! Christmas cards are my favourite cards to make (and I have way too many Christmas stamps so I have to make lots of cards to justify them!). So post as many Christmas cards as you like and I'll be happy.

    And I can't wait to see the All Booked Up bookmarks as I just received that set - as a retired librarian I was professionally obligated (wasn't I?!) to order it after I saw you use it a while back.

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  4. I like how you created the garland with the one image. Nice holiday card and it looks simple enough to make many of to help catch up with your stash.

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  5. Love your beautiful card! The bling really sets off this pretty image. tfs

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  6. No, don't stop!!! I love Christmas card ideas! I love your work, too... just my style.

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  7. you really are so goofy and so sweet too! I've done those book fairs ... scary!! love your holly bough. I think if you keep this coloring in you might become addicted! For someone who does not like to color you have been doing a lot of it lately in one form or another.

    Have I mentioned that I'm not doing Christmas cards this year ... I know, kinda weird but I've decided that it is just too much stress that I don't need. Maybe next summer I'll have myself a Christmas card making camp for a weekend, get them all done and then not have to worry about them. But for this year, it is birthday cards and get well cards for me straight through until Jan!!!!

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  8. Lovely card, Susan! The red bling makes it (in addition to your perfect, even, straight stamping and beautiful coloring).

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  9. You make such beautiful cards, Susan, whether they are for Christmas or any another occasion! Just please keep making cards and posting them. Posting five a day would not be too many for me! Your cards are such a pleasure to see. TFS.

    Carolyn
    mcw519

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  10. Book fairs... it's easy to have a love/hate relationship with them! I always made sure I had monitors to count the penny bags. And you are right... it's the kids whose families really can't afford anything that break one's heart.
    This is a gorgeous card! And what's with all the colouring??? Keep it up!

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  11. I'm so excited to see you'll be posting your bookmarks! I've been making them for Hanukkah, but I have the All Booked Up set as well. I can't wait to see what you do with it!
    Sarah

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  12. Tee hee! I laughed at your "giddy" comment with 2 sizes of bling. I did the same thing Friday night - used two different sizes of pearls on the same card, and I think I even did a little wiggle-dance. :)

    Beautiful cards, by the way.

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Thank you so much for taking time to comment!